THE STORY – A wildly entertaining and fittingly unconventional documentary about convention-defying singer, songwriter and record producer Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, one of the great cult figures of 20th-century American music whose singular voice and ideas have shaped the history not merely of soul music, but of country, hip-hop and a dozen other genres.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Isaac Gale, Ryan Olson & David McMurry (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
What so many documentaries fail to do is capture the essence of their subject, not just with what they depict, but by how they do it. Far too many docs cover, say, an avant-garde artist but do so in a standardized, biographical manner with little artistic flourish. This can have the unintended effect of downplaying, or worse, subtly ostracizing its subject’s groundbreaking and game-changing artistic impact. Not so with “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,” brought to vibrant life by directors Isaac Gale, Ryan Olsen, and David McMurry. Even the title makes it instantly clear that this isn’t your average fawning-yet-bland biographical documentary. Sure, there are some bumps along the way that pull from the central focus of the titular musician, but overall, this lively film captures the spirit of its singular subject in a way that’s reflective of his unique personality and unconventional career path.
Swamp Dogg, believe it or not, wasn’t given that name at birth. Born Jerry Williams Jr., he started his long and winding musical career as a singer and songwriter in the 50s, performing under the name “Little Jerry Williams.” Although the film goes through his career from its start to the present day (it ends at his 80th birthday party), it’s less concerned with the specifics of his life as bullet points and more interested in how he’s been crafted and shaped into the person he is today. Despite being in the business for seven-plus decades, he’s remained a figure more known to those either in the music business itself or music lovers who have a deep well of knowledge about the art form in the 20th century. This wasn’t entirely unintentional. As his neurologist daughter tells it, he made a concerted effort at the peak of his career to step back and focus on being a full-time dad. Which isn’t to say he didn’t have struggles. Mr. Dogg himself says that at one point, he was “taking Zoloft like you eat M&Ms.” But unlike so many stories of musicians with similar details, Swamp Dogg managed to balance his life out and, as shown in the documentary’s present-day footage, he’s happy with his life as an elder statesman of the music industry.
Throughout it all, the film maintains a buoyant, off-kilter energy that makes viewers feel invited into Swamp Dogg’s headspace. It opens with him welcoming in an artist who’s arrived at his house to, you guessed it, paint his pool (what is specifically being painted isn’t immediately clear, but the pay-off at the film’s conclusion is perfect). Over the course of virtually one day, we get to hang out with him and his friends as they chill by the pool, swapping stories and having jokey conversations about nothing, although, as anyone with a tight circle of friends knows, pointless conversations are the key to long-lasting relationships. This is intercut with recountings from Swamp Dogg about his life, archival footage, and interspersed diversions away from the central life story being told. Some of these asides feel strange or even unnecessary, like a segment where Swamp Dogg is portrayed as a fictional TV chef or where MoogStar (one of his more eccentric housemates, which is really saying something) tells the story of a spooky encounter he had at Evel Knievel’s grave. These help underscore the feeling of this being a casual, conversational tale, and, much like a story told by an elderly family member, the film gets sidetracked in ways that don’t always make sense but are mostly entertaining.
Smartly, the film highlights with its very construction the fact that, although this is a documentary, some parts of it must be deliberately put together in a way that stretches the definition of nonfiction. This is true of nearly all documentaries, but “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” delightfully highlights it with abrupt editing shifts, groovy character intros, animation, and touching moments showing Swamp Dogg in his yard reciting his lyrics in front of colorful backgrounds. This thematically aligns with the musician’s emphasis on blending artistic flourishes with real-life inspiration, like the scene where he shows a bizarre album cover of his, where he’s lying in a hot dog. As he puts it, he just wanted to be inside of a hot dog because it’s his favorite food. Hard to argue with that logic. But that’s not to say it’s all rollicking fun. When describing the death of his wife Yvonne, the film features one of the most poignant shots I’ve ever seen in a documentary – a simple, unremarked-upon image of his bed, half of which has clearly been slept in while the other half remains completely unrumpled and untouched.
Swamp Dogg lives in a modest LA home, which he shares with several friends who, out of the kindness of his heart, live there rent-free. It’s never explicitly stated, but it seems that Swamp Dogg prefers to simply do what makes him and others happy rather than seeking and displaying material evidence of his past success. He seems to be agreeable and pleasant, just like the film itself. And the movie doesn’t shy away from showing him in moments that most documentaries might avoid, such as a hilarious scene where dressed in a tank top and shorts with a dog in his lap, he pauses his interview simply to answer the phone. Or a hilarious moment during a house tour when he points out a not-so-secure-looking ceiling fan and notes, “The motherfucker look like it’s gonna fall down and decapitate everybody.”
Unfortunately, early in the film, a psychedelic montage plays that was either, judging by the strange morphing quality of the changing images, generated by AI or (perhaps even weirder) made to intentionally look like it was. It’s a distracting moment that starts the film off on the wrong foot. It even seems to be at odds with Swamp Dogg himself, who quite literally ends the film with the poignant, poetic statement, “My patience is growing thin for the synthetic world that we’re living in.”
For those who were unaware of Swamp Dogg before this film, like this critic, watching it will make you an instant fan of the good-natured musical genius. There’s still a lot of mystery left as to who he is, which is beautiful in its own way. After all, the man himself says, “Swamp Dogg is about being someone else while I look for Jerry Williams.” “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” is a delightful, funky examination of a life that not only affirms the worthiness of its subject’s existence but will bring newfound appreciation to audiences for their own.
